Deputy Minister of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy Mr. Kyriakos Kokkinos had a series of contacts with Estonian officials in the field of technology, research and digital policy, in Tallinn, where he accompanies the President of the Republic Mr. Nikos Anastasiadis during his official visit to the country.
Mr. Kokkinos also visited this afternoon the company Autotek, which is active in the field of automotive technology.
The Undersecretary said that “we had the opportunity to get into an autonomous vehicle. This is an innovative project of the company and the purpose of the vehicle is to transport passengers without a driver, only with the coordinates in GPS, with the geographical map.
The challenge in the car is how these kinds of technologies will become commonplace in traffic. Attempts are being made in all geographies today to introduce such innovative approaches to automobiles, but the laws, road signs and other provisions that are needed are not yet ready, so the use of such vehicles is done in controlled areas such as airports, parks, universities.
But, especially in the USA, the challenge is to be the autonomous car in the daily life of a city, without this meaning that it will replace the conventional car overnight. But technology and innovation exist, it is a matter of the infrastructure of the infrastructure society, of the people to adopt this kind of car and it is fully electric and it is not only autonomous.
In Cyprus we can start at an experimental stage and it may be one of the suggestions I will make to one of our university institutions to start designing this, not only for technological readiness because technology exists, but to see from the point of view of the country, in a controlled environment in the first stage after and in terms of legislation and insurance provisions that are needed, so that Cyprus can start preparing for the autonomous car or the car without a driver “.
Referring to the meetings he had today, Mr. Kokkinos said that “I had a very productive meeting today with the Deputy Minister of Digital Development of Estonia, Mr. Luukas Ilves. Estonia is a country that should be proud of its successes in digital transformation. Tomorrow, at the level of President of the Republic and Prime Minister of Estonia, we sign the Memorandum of Understanding and today we saw through this Memorandum what kind of synergies and collaborations we can immediately develop in Cyprus.
I have openly invited him to come in June in Cyprus and preliminary work will be done to start direct cooperation in the fields of cyber security, citizen registration in the Population Archive in a more modern way and on the issue of training scientists in modern digital technologies.
I also met Today with the Association of IT Companies of Estonia, we explained to them the plans and challenges of our country and how these challenges are opportunities for cooperation with the local IT ecosystem and we will host them in Cyprus, in cooperation with the Cyprus IT Association in June, for development of collaborations “,
